Burned (23 page)

That wasn't the
way that facial recognition worked, and we both knew it. Every time I
drove under a traffic camera or stepped into a store with video
feeds, there was a chance that I would throw an electronic flag
somewhere and bring half a dozen Coun'hij enforcers down on myself. I
was taking my life into my own hands, but I couldn't bring myself to
stay where I might have to see Alec again.

"I know
that you're hurting right now, Adri, but leaving our group isn't the
answer. You need to stick with Heath and me. We can't guarantee your
safety, but we can come close."

I opened my
mouth to argue with him, but he talked over the top of me.

"We'll go
with you—all of us. That way you'll be safe and never have to
see Alec again."

"I
appreciate the offer, Taggart, but we both know that can't happen.
I'm mad as hell, but that's not a good reason to let the entire
Tucson pack die."

Taggart was
already shaking his head. "You're missing the bigger picture
here, Adri. Whether we go with you or not, this coalition is
finished. None of us can afford to ally ourselves with someone who
can lie with impunity. If Alec can do this to you after telling
everyone that Brindi was nothing more than an obligation, then we
can't trust anything he's said to us up until now.
Everything—including the intelligence that brought us down
here—could be nothing more than a ruse to lure us into a
position where Kaleb and the rest can kill us.

"Whether
you want us to leave or not is beside the point, Adri. We're all
leaving here—within the hour. It's just a question of whether
or not you'll agree to come along."

Alec Graves
The Caravan RV Park
Tucson, Arizona

I left Adri's
motel room at a run, and I didn't slow down until I was out of sight
of the main road and all of the buildings. Even then I slowed only
long enough to strip out of my clothes and shift forms. Back home I
would have been risking punishment for shifting out in plain sight,
but that was the last thing I was thinking of as I tore away from the
RV park, all four legs a blur.

I ran without
paying any attention to where I was going, or how far I'd traveled. I
couldn't get lost, not with a nose that was sensitive enough to
retrace a trail that was days old, but I needed to get away from
everyone. I couldn't bear the thought of looking anyone in the
eyes—not after Adri had made such a fool out of me. She was
right, my inability to see her deception before now called into
question my very ability to lead the wolves and hybrids I'd gathered
together down here.

I ran for
nearly half an hour before my conscience started bothering me. My
anger and shame hadn't grown any weaker, but with every step I took I
knew that I was carrying myself further away from people who were
depending on me to defend them. Maybe I would ultimately lose control
of both groups of shape shifters, but for now I owed it to them to
get them all out of Tucson alive.

I fought off
the guilt for another twenty minutes before I finally turned around.
Every step I took was a dagger being driven into my side, but once I
got started moving I knew I had to keep pressing forward. If I
stopped there was just too much chance that I would turn and run
away.

Part of me had
been hoping to be able to sneak back to my RV without being noticed
by anyone, but I knew that wasn't going to happen as soon as I
crested the small rise just outside of the RV park. My RV was
surrounded by people, and they all seemed to be demanding that Brindi
move to the side and let them enter. As I got closer I was able to
hear them.

"He's not
in there, and before he left he made it clear that I wasn't supposed
to let anyone inside."

Jasmin bristled
at Brindi's words. "You don't get to tell us what we can or
can't do. You're less than nothing. You have no standing inside of
our pack. You're nothing more than a dirty sk—"

Carson grabbed
Jasmin by the arm and pulled her back out of reach of Brindi. "He's
not in there, Jasmin—his scent trail clearly left here an hour
ago and didn't return. If you want to know where he is, then track
him—his SUV is still here so he can't have gone very far."

Jasmin ripped
her arm free and turned on Carson with a fury that would have gotten
her into a fight if she'd been dealing with someone less even-keeled
than Carson.

"That's
what I've been trying to tell everyone. I tried to track him. He
walked away from here and headed off to the motel, but then his trail
just disappeared."

"Somebody
picked him up in a vehicle?"

"No—I'm
not an idiot. No vehicles crossed over his trail at any point in the
last hour. He disappeared. I've never seen anything like it. That's
why I want answers out of this human skank. Isaac's people have been
gone for more than twenty minutes and when I tried to find out what
was going on, that Nellie chick threatened to rip my face off. She's
a submissive through and through, but she was ready to go eight
rounds with me if I pressed the issue."

Jess moved over
to stand at Jasmin's back. "I got more than that out of Dominic.
They are leaving because Adri caught Alec getting ready to screw
Brindi. They are all freaked out because nobody knew that Alec could
lie that well. He's told all of us that he didn't return Brindi's
obsession."

Shock at what I
was hearing had slowed my pace, but the fury and fear that the wind
was carrying to me weren't the kind of thing I could let fester. I
needed to be down there dealing with the rumors.

Even now I was
having a hard time believing that Adri had started such a nasty rumor
about me just to hide her own transgressions. She hadn't seemed the
least bit concerned about me walking in on her and Tristan at the
time, but she must have had second thoughts about what that
information would do to her relationship with Taggart and the others.

I raced down to
my people and threw myself into the air, changing between one
heartbeat and the next.

"Everything
you've heard in the last hour has been a lie. Earlier today I walked
in on Adri and Tristan making out in Adri's room. I…it was too
much for me to deal with so I left. I've spent the last hour and a
half running in the hopes it would clear my head. I'm sorry that I
left you all here like that—it was the wrong thing to do, but I
won't be repeating that mistake again."

I expected
everyone to nod and relax. Instead everything from their scents to
their body language was screaming that they were getting more
confused and distrustful by the second.

James pushed
his way through to the front of the crowd, and when he spoke there
was a pleading note to his voice that I hadn't ever heard out of him
before.

"So you
walked in on them, and then came back here and made out with Brindi
as a way of getting back at Adri?"

"No, of
course not. I walked in on them and then I left directly from Adri's
room. I haven't been back here since I woke up. I never made out with
Brindi—that's just a red herring that Adri threw out there to
convince Isaac and the others to leave. She must have thought that
would be enough to keep everyone from finding out what she did, but
I'm not going to let her get away with it. I'm going to call Jack and
get him to send over the satellite feeds for this area. We're going
to track Adri and the rest down, and I'm going to make her
acknowledge what she did in front of everyone she cares about."

Carson was
shaking his head. "You can't force Isaac and the rest to bend
knee to you right now, Alec. They'll fight you on it. I'm not even
sure—"

"No. They
don't get to play the free will card on me—not right now, not
after abandoning our operation on nothing more than Adri's say-so, on
nothing more than a bald-faced lie that would have taken less than
two minutes to confirm or disprove."

"It's not
a lie."

I rounded on
Rachel, quivering with rage, and only the fact that she was my sister
and a human stopped me from throwing her into the side of my RV.

"How dare
you. Is this why you wanted to rejoin us? So you could undermine me?
It's not going to work, Rach. The fact that you're the only other
heir to the monarchy isn't going to carry any water with the packs.
If you were a shape shifter it might be enough, but a bunch of
hybrids aren't going to agree to follow a human."

Rachel looked
as terrified as she smelled, but she refused to back down. "You're
not listening to us, Alec. It's not a lie. Look at everyone, and then
look at Brindi. You're right, I'm not a shape shifter, but even I can
tell she's got a guilty conscience."

Rachel was
right. I looked at Brindi, and the guilt streaming off of her was so
intense that I couldn't believe I hadn't smelled it already. She
looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere, but she
squared her shoulders.

"It's
true. I'm sorry, Alec. At one point I would have done just about
anything for you, but I'm not that person anymore. I want to be with
you so badly I can barely think sometimes, but not like this."

I shook my
head, trying to understand what I was hearing. It didn't make any
sense. I knew Brindi. We'd spent an incredible amount of time
together over the last few weeks. She wasn't a very good liar. She
did okay for a human, but I'd caught her in several lies early on in
our acquaintance, and she'd had a lot more on the line back then than
she did right now.

Even more
mind-boggling, all of the incentives were pointing the wrong
direction. By lying and telling everyone that we'd made out—that
Adri had caught us making out—she was cutting herself off from
everything she'd seemed to like about her life lately. Adri and
Taggart couldn't possibly keep her in spending money forever, and
even if they could, she was risking her life by doing this. She was
addicted to me—so much so that she'd nearly died just a few
hours ago.

"Have you
found someone else you can transfer your skin addiction to? It's the
only rational explanation for why you'd be lying right now."

"What? No.
I'm not lying, Alec. You came back a few minutes after you left, and
you kissed me. We…we were making out, and then Adri walked in
on us."

My beast was
getting angrier by the second, but my emotions weren't that
straightforward. I felt like someone had pulled the rug out from
under me.

"I don't
know what is going on here, but I promise you all that I haven't
kissed Brindi. I walked in on Adri and Tristan and then I left.
That's it. I know that Brindi smells like she's telling the
truth—maybe she really believes that's what happened, but it's
not."

Carson shook
his head. "Isaac and Taggart wouldn't have pulled their people
out like that unless they were convinced that Adri was telling the
truth. When you add in Brindi's testimony it becomes all but
impossible to believe your version of events."

Grayson had
been standing quietly in the back of the group, but now he spoke up.
"It's a lot more likely that
you
are an expert liar than
that both Brindi and Adri are both capable of lying with impunity."

His voice was
incredibly dispassionate for someone who had flown down here in the
hopes that I would be able to offer him the redemption he needed. His
calm delivery was more convincing to the rest of my people than any
impassioned accusation could have been.

I tried to put
the pieces together. Was Grayson in on it? It had been hard enough to
believe that Brindi would be working with Adri on an effort to
discredit me.

In the human
world, the world where everything was more straightforward, the
possible explanations for all of this would have been limited, but we
didn't live in that world. I suddenly realized just how blind I'd
been.

"It was
Heath. I walked in on Adri and she realized that she had to convince
everyone that I was the bad guy. He came here pretending like he was
me, and then she walked in on the two of you. She planned it from the
start, and his ability to control what people see and smell meant
that there wasn't any way you could have known it wasn't me."

I had them—not
all the way, but there was finally an explanation for what had
happened, an explanation that would mean they could still trust me.
They needed that hope almost as badly as they needed to breathe. We
were all wanted men and women, and there was a limit to how long any
of us could survive simply by running. They needed me, needed me to
serve as a focal point just as much as they needed me to help fight
their battles.

I had them
right up until Brindi opened her mouth again. "It was you, Alec.
I want it to be Heath, but I've brushed up against Heath before and
he doesn't feel like you do. It
felt
like you. It was the same
buzz, the same everything…just more."

I shook my
head. "No, this is the answer. I can't explain it all—not
yet—but somebody used their power to set me up. Maybe Heath's
power is broader than we've been led to believe—maybe it wasn't
even him. I don't know for sure what happened, but that wasn't me."

Between one
breath and the next it hit me. "Go to Adri's room. I put a big
hole in it, and my scent will be there from before Adri came over
here. There's hard evidence that my story is the truth."

James took off
without waiting to see if anyone was going to join him. I pulled out
my phone and walked several steps away before dialing Jack. Based on
the way that everyone was shifting around as though unsure if they
should be stopping me from making that particular call, I didn't want
them overhearing Jack's half of the conversation.

"Hey, it's
me. I need you to get your hands on a satellite feed from this area
for the last hour. Half of our force picked up and left without
telling me what was going on. I need to track them down—the
sooner the better."